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The Pleasanton City Council unanimously voted to nix a Pleasanton family’s housing application earlier this month that would have turned an unused commercial office building near Main Street into a three-story residential building.
However, the council majority noted that while the project did not meet or satisfy many of the city’s General Plan, Downtown Specific Plan or Objective Design Standards, they hope the applicant returns with a reimagined plan that would have a better chance of being approved.
“I’m very sympathetic to this applicant,” Councilmember Jeff Nibert said during the Aug. 11 council meeting. “But there’s so many findings where standards are not being met, General Plan requirements are not being met, Downtown Specific Plan goals are not being met.”
Last year, Gautam Patel — a Pleasanton resident who owns a real estate business with members of his family — submitted his proposal to convert the 21,384-square-foot project site at 231 Old Bernal Ave. into a multi-story home for his family.
The proposal included the demolition of a roughly 6,000-square-foot commercial office building at the property, located between Augustine Street and Peters Avenue just over a block from Main Street.
In its place, the applicant sought to construct a four-unit, three-story residential building. The building would have been about 34 feet high and would have included three studio units — each would have been about 430 square feet — and a fourth unit that would have been over 13,600 square feet.
The proposal went to the city’s Planning Commission a couple of times, with the last one on May 27 ending with the commission’s majority agreeing to recommend that the City Council reject the project altogether.Â
This decision was based on staff’s analysis that the project conflicted with many city design standards and policies.
According to city associate planner Diego Mora, the project did not provide street-fronting commercial space, flexible ground-floor commercial space or commercial frontage. It did not retain any existing commercial square footage either.
“The proposal results in a 100% net loss of commercial space, contrary to (Downtown Specific Plan) objectives supporting downtown economic vitality,” Mora said.
Mora also said the project did not preserve downtown’s commercial viability, maintain small-town scale and character or encourage context-sensitive infill development compatible with downtown standards.
He said staff also found inconsistencies with the project’s architecture and design compatibility as related to the Downtown Specific Plan, and found that the project did not meet several of the city’s objective design standards and municipal codes related to the site layout, accessibility, open space, landscaping and utilities.
“I really support reinvestment in the downtown,” Mayor Jack Balch said. “I think that this (project) presents elements I actually do like … however my decision isn’t based on the personal architectural preferences I have; it’s based on our General Plan, our Downtown Specific Plan and our Objective Design Standards.”
Balch was specifically concerned about conformance with city standards for clean water, sanitary sewer connections, utility enclosures and potential ponding on the city’s streets.
When Councilmember Julie Testa asked if the city had tried to work with the applicant to address some of these issues, community development director Ellen Clark said staff had several conversations with the applicant in an effort to “produce a project that balanced what they were seeking to do, which was sort of a large, multigenerational single-family home”.
“We just ultimately couldn’t get there and couldn’t get to a place where staff could support a project that was close enough to what the applicant wanted to propose,” Clark said, adding that staff did try to work with the applicant to come to some consensus on the project’s design that would have satisfied the city’s design standards and guidelines.
But now that the project has been sent back to the drawing board, some councilmembers pointed out the risk of higher-density housing projects being developed at the site, due to the site’s proximity to the Altamont Corridor Express train.
“Considering that this property is so close to the ACE station, and thus qualifies to become a transit-oriented development, which means largely ministerial approval for the city, for all such projects that are within half a mile of the ACE station, I’d like not for this property to end up there,” Nibert said.
In the end, the consensus from the council was that they would like to see the applicant come back and work with staff to come up with a project that meets the city’s design standards and guidelines.
Vice Mayor Matt Gaidos also talked about how some of the standards in the Downtown Specific Plan are subjective, which he said could leave people feeling hesitant to propose future developments.
“My first thought when I looked at (the proposed project) was, ‘That’s a beautifully designed piece of property that I wish I could build for my family,'” he said.Â
He also said he mostly did not want to signal that he’s unwilling to be creative and work with someone to put a residential development downtown.
“This is the kind of housing people are going to want to build to be able to afford to stay in our community with their family,” Gaidos added. “We need to be careful about signaling opposition to it based on subjective standards of a specific plan.”
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